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Georgia at Vanderbilt | They said it

Georgia is ranked fifth in the country, playing lights-out on defense and finding a rhythm on offense.

But it’s hard to stay at (or near) the top. Georgia coach Kirby Smart, after years at perennial powerhouse Alabama, knows that. Here’s what he – and a few other Bulldogs – had to say about tuning out the hype that’s building, in state and out, around Georgia:

“Well, we practice and when we practice, we practice hard. We show kids the tape. We are very honest with them. I think when you watch the tape, everybody can get humbled by the tape. We got beat, we got beat up at positions, we got blocked at positions – so Monday is all we are worried about and all we are really focused on. We call Monday ‘block-protection Monday’ because we go out and really work on blocking people on offense or protecting blocks on defense. That’s one of the No. 1 things we can get better at. If you get better at that, it does not matter what you call a lot of times. You just get better at fundamentals, and we try to humble the guys by showing them the honest truth.”

– Smart

“Honestly, we don’t even pay attention to it. We just focus on the week ahead. It has not been any different in the weeks prior, it is just that each Saturday you have another game and different opponent. We are just focused on improving ourselves each day and that is our main task. We will take it one day at a time.”

– Junior tight end Jackson Harris

“We don’t pay attention to the rankings. We keep working like we’re ranked whatever we were ranked at the beginning of the year. And we keep going, it starts in practice, keep our head down, and like we said, our motto is just to keep chopping wood.”